This review is part of the 1 Pound Challenge – can you find a decent gadget in a pound shop?

PoundWorld are selling something that’s named (deep breath) “2 in 1 Laptop Screen Protector & Mouse Mat”. Basically, it’s a thin, black mouse mat with a rubberised back that measures 12 x 8 inches (approx.). It’s sold flat in a cardboard sleeve.

It’s “2 in 1″ because it can be stores on the top of a laptop keyboard when the lid is closed. This protects the keyboard from damaging the screen (yes, this does happen – the TrackPoint on my ThinkPad Edge, for instance, leaves a mark on the screen). However, I’d only recommend doing this if you feel the hinge is strong enough and the lid doesn’t “latch” into place (i.e. if you simply fold it down then this should be fine as the mat won’t cause an undue pressure). At 12 x 8 inches it’s unlikely to be big enough to cover the keyboard, but meerly keep it seperate from the screen. Well, unless you have a Netbook or small laptop – it’s far too big for my Edge 11.

Although it’s sold primarily as a screen protector it’s greatest strength is as a mouse mat. And it works really well – as good as the gaming mouse mat I bought some time ago for a lot, lot more than £10 (and that came rolled up and took an age to get to go straight!).

Summary of 2 in 1 Laptop Screen Protector & Mouse Mat

As a mouse mat this is brilliant – well worth the money. It’s use as a screen protector, although this works, is suspect as jamming something between a closed laptop lid is only likely to cause problems in the long run. Ignore the latter, concentrate on the former and it’s great!

Reviewed by David Artiss on 2nd January 2012.

This review is part of the 1 Pound Challenge – can you find a decent gadget in a pound shop?

Yes, the keyboard is very mucky!

I’m not sure what to make of this one. It works well and seems excellent value, but I’m not sure what do use it for.

This is the Signalex USB LED light. It costs £1 from Poundland. It plugs into a USB port and has a flexible arm (and of good quality too), about 20cm long, on which is a cylindrical tube, just over 16cm long, containing 5 bright white LEDs. Plug it in and it lights up.

But light up what?

The cylinder appears to be stuffed with a curl of silver card so the LEDs bleed through to the back, meaning that if the lights are turned away from you, you can still see them. Besides, any laptop screen will reflect the light back. The arm isn’t long enough to have the lights reflecting down on the keyboard without it getting in the way of viewing the screen.

So what do you use it for?

I’ve found one use – my keyboard at work has a USB port in the back and plugged in there I can get it to illuminate my keyboard. However, light at work isn’t a problem so I’m unlikely to use it. But, I guess, it’s a start.

Summary of Signalex Ultra Bright USB 5 LED Light

It works. Very well. The lights are bright and the whole thing is of a reasonable quality – certainly worth £1. But what do you use it for? If you can think of something, then it’s worth the money.

Reviewed by David Artiss on 1st January 2012.

Back in November I purchased a Sony Ericsson Xperia Mini Pro Android phone as my daughter’s Christmas present. O2 had a limited offer on it at the time where you got an additional £20 voucher with it, so I snapped it up.

When I received it, I took the phone out of the box, put the SIM card in and generally checked that all seemed fine. There’s nothing worse than being given something expensive as a present only to find it a “lemon” on the day! I also took the opportunity to upgrade the phone’s firmware as well to the latest (if that goes wrong it could “brick” the phone, so doing this straight away seemed the sensible thing to me). This went well, so I packaged the phone back up.

Come Christmas, my daughter was very happy with her phone. Unfortunately, after a few hours, things turned sour. Whenever she left the phone it would lock (as it’s supposed to) but then turn itself off. A quick Google found that other users had experienced the same problem but I couldn’t find a solution. The PC software that you can use with the phone comes with a “repair” option but that refused to work (see screenshot to the right). A system reset didn’t solve the problem either. However, I did find that it didn’t turn off if the phone was charging.

Anyway, Christmas being Christmas (relatives to visit, etc) I wasn’t able to call O2 until Wednesday 29th. I rang Customer Services and they were very pleasant and happy to help. When they realised that there was nothing they could do and the phone would need changing, they put me through to their “exchange and repair” department. That’s where it went wrong. The new lady I spoke to was short with her responses, unhelpful and, unfortunately, speaking on a bad line which made the whole conversation even more difficult.

When she looked up my details she realised that I’d had the phone over a month. Therefore, it would need returning to be “repaired”. I explained that it was a Christmas present, so she said she’d speak to a manager. This seemed to take a while and when she returned she said that it was policy to wave the usual month limit in this situation¹.

Next, she told me that the phone was out of stock. Funny, they were selling it on their website. At this point they managed to find stock.

Finally, she gave me the details of where to send the phone and told me they wouldn’t send the new one until they’d received it – this may take up to 2 weeks. I sent the phone that day. The next day the new one turned up².

This phone works fine but, oddly, came with a more recent version of the firmware than the original had shipped with. None-the-less, it didn’t have the latest. BUT, I haven’t updated – I don’t know whether it was this update that caused the original issue or not. Unfortunately, I never noted the original phones initial firmware level but, for interest, the replacement phone (sans power issue) is on 4.0.2.A.0.42. The latest level is 4.0.2.A.0.58.

A return to form from O2 on their poor customer service. Meantime, I have contacted Sony Ericsson to see if they can shed any light on this problem.

1. question – if this is standard policy, why did she not say anything about this first, but speak to a manager instead? [↩]
2. obviously inept in multiple ways [↩]